The Colosseum: Titus opens the amphitheatre, AD 80
The Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheatre, was begun under the emperor Vespasian in the early 70s AD and dedicated by his son Titus in AD 80 with games that Cassius Dio says lasted 100 days.
2:20 · Episode film
AI-generated historical dramatization.
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When and why the Colosseum was built, how it may have been funded, Titus’s 100 days of opening games, the flooding debate, gladiator myths and visiting today.
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Rome. The Colosseum, AD 80. This valley was the private lake of the emperor Nero. After his fall, the new emperor, Vespasian, builds an amphitheatre on it. Vespasian dies in AD 79. His son Titus, now emperor, opens it the next year. Entry is free. Perhaps 50,000 people take their seats, shaded by great awnings. The games last 100 days, one historian says. Thousands of wild animals are hunted in the arena. Gladiators fight in pairs. A beaten man can raise a finger to ask for mercy. The emperor decides. A poet of the time tells of two gladiators, Priscus and Verus, so evenly matched that the emperor frees them both. Titus throws small wooden balls into the crowd. Each names a prize: food, clothes, silver, even a horse. Then, one historian says, he floods the arena and stages a sea battle. Titus dies the next year, aged forty-one. The games here go on for more than four centuries. Its later name, the Colosseum, comes from a giant statue of Nero’s that stood beside it.
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